"...To frame the issue, the video goes back to the early 1970s and a controversy that older Americans may recognize from a single word: Tris. Chemists know it as Tris(2,3-dibromopropyl) phosphate. Under the shorter sobriquet, it gained national fame as a flame retardant in children’s pajamas. Its purpose was to buy precious seconds that, in a fire, might spell the difference between survival and death.

But fame turned to notoriety later that decade when research by two scientists, Arlene Blum and Bruce N. Ames, concluded that Tris is a mutagen, a gene-altering agent. The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, a new agency in the ’70s, promptly prohibited its use in the sleepwear. Even though the courts then struck down the ban, children’s clothing manufacturers in effect enforced it by agreeing to keep that form of Tris out of their products. They then did the same with a new version of the compound, chlorinated Tris. But chlorinated Tris itself was never banned. As time passed, it made its way, along with an array of other chlorinated and brominated flame retardants, into the furniture found in most American homes...."
​https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/us/a-flame-retardant-that-came-with-its-own-threat-to-health.html?_r=0

In ancient Rome, purple was the color of royalty, a designator of status. And while purple is flashy and pretty, it was more important at the time that purple was expensive. Purple was expensive, because purple dye came from snails.

To make Tyrian purple, marine snails were collected by the thousands. They were then boiled for days in giant lead vats, producing a terrible odor. The snails, though, aren’t purple to begin with. The craftsmen were harvesting chemical precursors from the snails that, through heat and light, were transformed into the valuable dye.

But this telling leaves out one of the best parts of the story.

The video explains that snail-fueled purple persisted until chemists learned to make synthetic dyes. But the development of an artificial purple wasn’t a deliberate decision, but a happy accident for a young chemist named William Henry Perkin.
​

​An ancient sea snail shell discovered on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem has created tremendous interest among researchers, who believe the find ties in with the particular shade of vibrant blue dye ("tchelet" in Hebrew) used in ancient times to color the fringes of religious garments.

The shell of the branded dye-murex (Hexaplex trunculus) snail was recently discovered as part of the Temple Mount Sifting Project underway in the Emek Tzurim National Park. The project is funded by the Ir David Foundation and directed by archaeologists from Bar-Ilan University.
​Archaeologist Zachi Dvira noted that finding the shell of an ancient sea snail far inland on the Temple Mount raises questions, as such snails are generally excavated in coastal archaeological digs.